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iTunes Extras Finally Come to Apple TV

Apple must have been paying attention when Agen Schmitz wrote about the lengths he went to in order to watch iTunes Extras on his Apple TV (see “Solving the iTunes Extras Streaming Conundrum,” 4 June 2014), because the company has, at long last, brought these bonus features to the second- and third-generation Apple TV.

Before you can watch iTunes Extras on your Apple TV, you must be running version 6.2 or later of the system software. To make sure you’re up to date, choose Settings > General > Software Updates > Update Software.

To check if a movie has iTunes Extras, open its information page in the Movies app. Apple has also created a Movies Featuring iTunes Extras section in the store if you’re looking to rent or buy a movie with extras. You also have the option to preview the extras before buying or renting a movie.

To view iTunes Extras from your purchased movies, just play them as normal. If a movie features iTunes Extras, you’re presented with a DVD-like menu before the movie plays. From here, you can play bonus features and, in some movies, choose scenes. What appears here will vary slightly with each movie.

While it’s long overdue, the addition of iTunes Extras is great news for Apple TV owners, who now have access to much of the same bonus content as disc owners. And Apple says that iTunes Extras are coming to iOS with the release of iOS 8 this fall.

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Do you access the extras via Movies icon and stream it all or via the computers icon and pull it from the computer and iTunes 11.3? I've got 6.2 on my 3rd gen Apple TV and I can't get it to work from either location for the movie Star Trek Into Darkness and that's one that they feature as having the content already. Thoughts?

And thanks for being the only ones out there to actually list how you get to them. Everyone else is just parroting the Apple press release with no usable info in it.

After another restart of the Apple TV I have it working from the Movies app as well now. No luck on playing them via Computers which is typically the way we play movies (a better faster experience overall). But at least we have extras on the Apple TV again.

While I wait for Apple TV to finish calculating download time on the update (several minutes now), I have a question... why do all streaming movies from any service not have captioning? Apple TV has it buried in global settings and I seem to remember the caption was right over the face of the actors. Not helpful.

I like to watch films late at night and don't want it loud. I'm also older. Are they mumbling or am I losing my hearing? Dynamics vary wildly. I set it at one level and put on captioning... when I play DVDs.